Please provide your name, education setting, role (teacher, administrator, staff developer, etc), age group that you work with, geographical location, key questions that drive you professionally.
Abstract
What year are you preparing your learners for? The honest answer to this question is operationalized in your current curriculum. Can we honestly say that we preparing our learners for five, ten or twenty years from now?
This year's kindergarten class is the Class of 2023 and if this does not get our attention...what else will?
Class of 2023
Curriculum design requires deliberate choices reflecting the time in which we live. Our choices are preparing our learners for their future. A Curriculum 21 Review Team in a school or educative setting should rigorously review the curriculum and ask three questions:
What do we keep?
What do we cut?
What do we create?
Full Description
In order to modernize the curriculum, we recommend the strategic REPLACEMENT of dated assessment types with more contemporary forms. It is my belief that one of the reasons we see boring and mediocre formative assessments from our learners is because the types of assessment requests are boring and mediocre. If we are not engaged in 21st century types of experiences that our learners are engaged in then how can we expect our learners to be engaged themselves.
The process is straightforward. We ask that each teacher examine the curriculum for a semester and REPLACE a dated assessment type with a modern one.
A group of primary students in Copenhagen connect with a group of students in Alabama to compare their views of Hans Christian Anderson stories.
Instead of an oral report with notecards the students will create a video podcast. Instead of a written report on a topic students can create a documentary using simple "movie maker tools" including a written script. Instead of journal entry, the class develops a closed social network with a blog site. All we ask is that each teacher learns something new. The sharing between colleagues of these "UPGRADES" can create a positive contagion.
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It is critical to recognize that our students want us to join them in the 21st century. Take a look at the iSchool Initiative video created by a 17 year old student from Altanta. We recommend that you start working with colleagues and develop a social network to cull together your resources and links.
Video Take a look at this video clip developed by a 17 year old student from Atlanta about how he think schools and curriculum should look in the 21st Century:
New Award Winning School Designs inspire 21st Century Learning
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Curriculum 21: Upgrade Teaching and Learning
Upgrading to New Assessment Types
Heidi's CURRICULUM 21 Blog - JOIN ME